Developing and testing a surveillance impact assessment methodology

With the increasing pervasiveness of surveillance, from big companies such as Google and Facebook, as well as from the intelligence agencies, such as the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), there is a clear need for a surveillance impact assessment (SIA), a method that addresses not only issues of privacy and data protection, but also ethical, social, economic, and political issues. The SAPIENT project, funded by the European Commission, and undertaken by a consortium of partners from several European countries, aimed to develop an SIA methodology, based on stake- holder needs and a set of scenarios. This paper describes how the SAPIENT consortium developed its SIA methodology and some of the key elements comprising the methodology. The consortium tested the SIA in several cases studies. So far as the consortium knows and is concerned, this was the first time that an SIA methodology was developed and tested in real case studies—the results of which led to develop- ment of a streamlined version of the SIA.